Mt. Edit Cavell, Jasper National Park
Canon 40D, 17-40mm F4.0L @ 20mm, 100 iso, 1/10 sec, F8.0
‘Behind the Shot’ is a blog feature I hope to do occasionally.
The image above is of Mt. Edith Cavell, with it’s glacial runoff lake in the foreground, in Jasper National Park.
I have had the pleasure of going there several times and I absolutely love it. It’s accessed off a side road from the Icefields Parkway, just south of Jasper. A long winding, switchback road takes you right up to the trailhead parking lot. I highly recommend leaving any long trailers at the highway as the switchbacks could certainly cause you grief.
The mountain has a long history, including early climbing attempts. There used to be two glaciers on the face, the large spectacular Angel Glacier that comes right down and you can walk to it, and (previously), the Ghost Glacier which hung precipitously to the face until in 2012 it came crashing down. Causing quite a bit of damage to the trail and parking lot. You can just make out Ghost Glacier in the image in the snow band across the face, to the left of Angel Glacier.
Jasper ranks as a favorite all time place for me to be. I knew I wanted to shoot Cavell and planned accordingly, hoping for a decent morning. Heading out before dawn I made my way up the road, parked off the side some, then headed down to the lake. I always find it true when it the Rockies, that saying of ‘everywhere you turn your head is a photograph’. However, this fact demands of you to carefully pick your composition for the elements you want to include. The other difficulty lies in the extreme tonal ranges encountered in mountain landscapes, often surpassing what a camera sensor can record, and this usually entails some careful post processing.
I’ve shot many different perspectives of this mountain, but I liked how this one captured it’s essence.
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